Chemical Container Blaze Restricts Brazil's Santos Port
Up to a dozen containers carrying chemicals caught fire at a terminal at Brazil's largest port of Santos on Thursday, restricting ship movement, representatives of the port authority Codesp said. The fire at the container terminal operated by logistics company Localfrio in Guaruja, on the eastern side of Santos, started around 3 p.m. Brasilia time (1700 GMT) and continued into the evening, sending plumes of smoke across the shipping channel at the commodity exporting port. The port authority said in a statement it had stopped ships from docking at a terminal operated by Santos Brasil next to Localfrio's Alfandegado terminal because of smoke, but otherwise the port was operating normally. Santos Brasil also said its operations were stopped indefinitely.
Braskem to Get New Chairman
Brazilian petrochemical firm Braskem SA said on Friday it will hold a general meeting on Aug. 4 to appoint a new chairman, after its current chairman was arrested for alleged involvement in a corruption scheme. The new chairman will be Newton de Souza. He will replace Marcelo Odebrecht, chief executive officer of construction company Odebrecht SA, who was arrested last month for alleged involvement in a kickback scheme at state-run oil company Petrobras. (Reporting by Juliana Schincariol; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
Batista Shipbuilder Proposes 25-Year Payback Plan
OSX Brasil SA, the troubled shipbuilder controlled by former Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista, proposed a 25-year plan to pay back creditors to a Rio de Janeiro bankruptcy court, the company said on Friday in a statement. The proposal includes an initial three-year relief period before OSX would have to start making the payments. The shipbuilder also said it could seek to secure additional financing and make changes to its shareholding structure. OSX filed for bankruptcy protection in November, as part of the unraveling of the once high-flying empire of energy, logistics and commodities that Batista assembled during an economic boom in Brazil that fizzled in 2011. At the time of its bankruptcy filing, OSX sought to restructure a debt burden of 5.34 billion reais ($2.42 billion).
OGX lands $73 Mln loan
Bankrupt Brazilian oil company Óleo and Gás Participações SA, formerly known as OGX, has obtained a $73.2 million loan to finance exports and related costs, the company said on Tuesday in a securities filing. The company, the flagship of Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista's EBX energy, mining, shipbuilding and port-operation group before its collapse, said the export prepayment agreement will have a discount rate of 18 percent. The filing did not say whether other OGX creditors had approved the loan agreement. The company said the loan will be contracted by its subsidiary OGX Petróleo e Gás S.A. OGX, which is still controlled by Batista, made Latin America's largest-ever bankruptcy protection filing on Oct.
Brazil's Batista Target of Insider Trading Probes
Eike Batista, who was Brazil's richest man for most of the past decade, is under investigation for allegedly engaging in insider trading while he chaired his now-bankrupt oil-producing and shipbuilding firms, securities industry watchdog CVM said on Friday. In a statement sent to Reuters, Rio de Janeiro-based CVM confirmed that Batista is a respondent in six of nine probes that executives of his Grupo EBX conglomerate are facing for breaching securities rules. In two of them, regulators are examining whether Batista allegedly took advantage of his access to privileged information.
